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Topic: Assyrian is not Aramaic (Read 829 times)

I was listening to some Assyrian friends talking about our language and realized that they along with a lot of people do not know the complicated story of our current Assyrian language and it’s true origin.

If cultures are usually named after their language ( for example French, English and German)why are we Assyrians, but speak Aramaic.

Who were the Aramaic people, why do we speak their language and what happened to our language.

Some history is necessary to explain how we became not what we speak.

Assyrians are named so because of one of their many gods Ashur and the city he was worshiped in also called Ashur. Although all people originate from an extremely early history the unique point at which modern day Assyrian combine and become one is during the Akkadian empire. This is our early empire and it is the point in history when our first language Akkadian becomes the most powerful language of Mesopotamia. This is because Akkad was the first empire in the region and indeed the world. Changes would destroy that empire and another called Assyria would rise again. But during this time the Assyrians would begin supplementing their language with a language from a tribal people from modern day Syria called the Arameans. Their language had a script and the decimal number system so it was easier and better than Akkadian (our first language). Akkadian used cuneiform and a number system based on 60 (that system remains in the 60 seconds used in time).So the Assyrians slowly started changing to this language. But people never completely surrender their original language, and this is true for us Assyrians today. Although we do speak a dialect of Aramaic, our version of aramaic is heavily tainted by our old language Assyrian (Akkadian). So heavily infused with Assyrian is our language that it is named Assyro-aramaic. The Assyro comes first because we speak more Assyrian than Aramaic. Jesus Christ, our lord, was presumed to speak Aramaic because we the Assyrians had taken that language and spread it to the whole Middle East, just like the Roman Empire spread Latin. However Unlike the Aramaic spoken by the empire as a whole (pure Aramaic) we Assyrians retained our unique old Assyrian language and combined it with Aramaic. So yes Jesus spoke Aramaic but we do not speak it, at least not purely. If you speak Arabic and Assyrian for example you could understand Aramaic far better than an Assyrian who speaks only Persian and Assyrian. Arabic is a language completely derived from Aramaic. Their are many dialects of Aramaic. The most various dialects of Aramaic are in Ethiopia because Christianity fled to those undesirable lands, fleeing persecution, and remain their today. So that is the whole story behind why we the Assyrians are said to speak Aramaic. Incidentally, In syria today their are two villages left that still speak the original Aramaic language. The movie Passion of the Christ used their language to speak.

We few Assyrians have had the credit for many inventions and contributions to humanity stolen from us and so should not do it to an even smaller group of people. We the Assyrians are responsible for the spread of the Aramaic language, but it is our lord Jesus Christ and us the Assyrians that speak the language of the Aramaic people of Syria.

The easiest way to show that we speak Assyrian and not anyother language is just to tell and show them, that we call our languagen "Surayit" or "Suret", instead of arami (Which out of a logical contest would be used if we would be aramaic speakers).